


Uncanny Valley

by Dangereuse



Series: Tomarry D&D-athon [18]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: He licked Harry so he's his husband first, Husband dibs, M/M, Maybe too damn much, Poor Justin Finch Fletchley is in the wrong place at the wrong time, Tom can't handle being jealous, Tom feels too many feels, Tom needs to dial it down, he loves his husband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23745394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dangereuse/pseuds/Dangereuse
Summary: Tom wakes up and Harry is gone.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Tomarry D&D-athon [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692079
Comments: 12
Kudos: 291





	Uncanny Valley

When Tom woke up, Harry’s side of the bed was cold. His hand shot out immediately anyway, reaching for his husband, not curled up to his chest where he was supposed to be.

Then he smiled. Harry must be doing what he called ‘being spontaneous, Tom, you should try it’, and attempting to be romantic. Perhaps he was making Tom breakfast in bed. Tom resettled in the sheets, and stretched out his legs to his toes. He loved when Harry got in this kind of mood. Harry was so affectionate, his heart so big, and Tom wanted to suck up as much of it for himself as he possibly could. There was nothing he coveted like Harry’s attention entirely on him.

Then Tom paused, disconcerted. Harry still liked to make things the Muggle way, despite how Tom teased him for it. And the Muggle way was loud, pans clanging, grease popping, faucet running, and above all, Harry singing, terribly and off-tune. The flat was silent.

Tom got up. It took a half minute to case the flat, despite its size, but Tom knew as soon as he focused that Harry wasn’t here. They’d been married so long that Tom could feel Harry’s magic like a warm buzz against his skin when he focused and they were in close proximity.

Tom was cold.

He checked the usual places that Harry would leave a note if he was called away. Harry taught DADA at Hogwarts, but he often consulted with the Aurors when they needed an expert opinion. Or had Hermione asked him for help? Harry was a magical powerhouse, but he rarely used it for himself in his own day to day spellcasting. Hermione would borrow him from time to time, a huge mystical battery for some of the more complex spells she was working in the Unspeakable department.

Either way, Harry would have left him a note, even as he rolled his eyes over it. Tom had worked Harry into it through the years. Harry was impulsive and he would get excited and be raring off to go, but Harry also was exceptionally empathetic. He knew just how much Tom liked to know where he was, that he was safe, when he would be back.

There was nothing. Tom was beginning to get pissed, working himself up into the strop he would set on Harry for not leaving a note, and greedily considering how he would capitalize on Harry’s guilt; maybe get Harry to rub his feet or get him to go to a terribly boring state dinner in robes that Tom hand-picked.

Then Tom came to a crashing halt in the middle of their living room. Their wedding pictures were gone from the mantle. Tom suddenly burst into white hot rage. Had someone stolen Harry, stolen their wedding photos too?

Except the other photos were wrong too. There was Tom at graduation, but Harry wasn’t under his arm, pressing a kiss to his cheek and knocking his graduation tassel askew in his fervor. There was Tom getting his dual Mastery, and Harry wasn’t there, whistling obnoxiously and clapping fit to burst. His first address as Minister was there, but Harry wasn’t standing behind him, looking like the most awkward and adorable-but incredibly proud-First Lord.

The photo of Harry receiving his Order of Merlin was gone too. Harry’s stag party with a drunk Ron and Hermione was nowhere to be seen. Their first anniversary with Harry’s adorably flushed cheeks and swollen lips had Vanished. Most damning, was the lack of his own wedding ring, glaring at him from his bare finger. 

Had Harry...left him? Taken his ring? And pulled himself from all their shared photo frames?

Tom shook that thought off. Harry would never be so petty. Harry would also have never been so stealthy and sly. Tom would have had some inkling. Harry couldn’t lie to save his life, much less pretend everything was wonderful and then slip away without a trace in the night. Moreover, completely out of character for someone who would jump in front of a curse without blinking.

Tom looked around. None of Harry’s jumpers were discarded over the back of their sofas. Harry’s huge cast iron skillet was gone from the kitchen. Harry’s mauled (squeezed from the center) tube of toothpaste and muggle vibrating toothbrush (Hermione’s influence) were gone from the bathroom. Harry’s separate closet Tom had folded into the wall with an Extendable Charm was gone without even a tingle of residual magic. His drawers in the armoire were filled with Tom’s own clothes.

Tom did a quick spell, to summon anything of Harry’s, trying to catch a forgotten sock or a fallen follicle of hair. Nothing came.

Harry was gone from his life, like he’d never been.

* * *

Tom’s admin was the same, which he found out when a panicking Draco came through the Floo, without even a by-your-leave. He never did that, normally, after the first time he’d spotted Tom fucking Harry over their kitchen table. Just another mark against this terrible, terrible world.

Draco did a double take when he saw him, then blurted. “Minister Riddle! You’ve a meeting in ten minutes with the Budgetary Committee! You’re not even dressed!”

Tom didn’t even look over where he was carefully measuring exactly ten drops of rose oil into the solid gold cauldron in front of him. True enough. He was still wearing his pajamas and his silk dressing gown (embroidered TMR, no trailing P), but he’d transfigured a pair of his own respectable slippers into the fluffy monstrosities that Harry preferred. For potion’s safety. Really. 

“Draco, I find I am terribly unwell and I won’t be able to make it into the office this morning. I wouldn’t expect me in for the rest of the day, and perhaps the remainder of the week.” He put the rose oil dropper down, stirred the potion three times widdershins, then crumbled in some powdered bicorn horn. At least his potions laboratory was exactly the same and he could find what he needed.

“Minister!” Draco protested. “The meeting discussing Dragon Pox vaccination distribution is at three--.”

Tom finally looked away from the potion with a snarl. “Draco. You will tend to my affairs today. I will not be in, even if the Minister for France shows up on our doorstep and wishes to officially declare Magical Britain’s complete and utter superiority. For all intents and purposes I am grievously ill and will be completely unreachable for today. I will give you three seconds to get through my Floo before I ensure you will never be able to Floo anywhere ever again. _Am. I. Perfectly. Clear_?”

Draco bolted for the Floo. At least that was the same. Tom turned back to his potion and raised his wand. He carefully bent over and pulled a short but beautiful silver glimmer of memory with his wand. He had nothing of Harry’s hair, of his blood or skin or nails, no object he had ever touched, no article he had ever owned. All he had was this, his memory, Harry imprinted into Tom’s mind. The breathy sound of Harry’s giggle hit Tom’s ears like a clap as he laid the memory in the cauldron. As soon as it touched, the potion turned to beautiful white smoke.

Tom took a deep breath, and tipped the cauldron over, spilling the mass on the ground. Out bounded the familiar silvery sight of Harry’s Patronus, lighting the room with it’s ethereal glow. The magnificent creature pranced for a brief moment, before it caught sight of Tom and stilled, head cocked and absolutely stationary. Tom paused. Was he to be denied this too?

Then the great creature jumped forward and knocked him with its massive head. Tom rocked back on his feet, let loose a breath he didn’t know he was holding. His hands reached out to its muzzle.

“ _Prongs,_ ” he breathed out, and stroked the great beast down its beautiful silver snout.

***

Prongs was as good as a bloodhound, gamboling beside Tom as he led Tom and his stolen broomstick (really, the neighbors should really lock their shed) all the way to Hogsmeade. He hated flying, as much as he could and still be Harry’s husband, but it wasn’t like he could just Apparate.

The great beast was almost as soothing to his nerves as Harry. He couldn’t even mind when it paused ever so often to lip at Tom’s hair.

Prongs led him to a bright and cheery cottage on the edge of the town. Tom made a sigh of relief when he noticed Harry’s special brand of pruning on the roses in the window box.

Prongs melted into nothing at the cottage’s bright red door, that same breathy giggle as before tingling down his spine and pulling up the hairs all the way down his arms.

Tom straightened his robes, ran a hand through his hair. Harry always liked it a little disheveled, so Tom didn’t draw his wand on it. He took a deep breath, stepped up to the warm little door, and knocked.

The door swung open after a minute, an entire eternity, and there, _finally_ , was Harry. Tousle headed, eyes dancing with happiness and still laughing back at something somebody had said inside the house, his attention caught inside. Harry turned with his happy smile to Tom. Tom sucked down the sight of Harry like he was the last three drops of moisture in a great salt desert.

Harry sobered and straightened up immediately at the sight of him. “Er, hullo. Minister Riddle? Er,” he scratched his nose, looking surprised. He glanced behind Tom on both sides. “Can I help you? Or, er, are you here for Justin?”

“Harry, who is it?” called a male voice from inside. Footsteps. Then a man--Tom vaguely remembered him from their year at Hogwarts, Justin Finch Fletchley or something--came down the cottage’s narrow hallway and wrapped his arms around the waist of _Tom’s husband._

Harry let him, leaning back into the weight of Justin, tilting his neck just so that the man could slide his face to the side of Harry’s neck and reveal the _bright purple bruising of suck-marks_ just barely peeking out from underneath the over-stretched neckline of his jumper.

“Well, er, it’s the Minister of Magic,” Harry said, sounding confused. His left hand came up to pat Justin’s arm around his waist, metal glinting on his ring finger. “He came to give us a house call?” The ring was a terrible plain thing, some dim low carat gold, nothing Tom would ever choose. It absolutely was not the ring that _Tom had already chosen_.

Tom saw red.

***

Tom shot up, as best he could from his hospital bed, absolutely filled with rage. The phantom feel of his wand was still heavy and hot in his hand. Black magic roiled in his blood, the image of Justin Fucking Finch-Fletchley hitting the floor of the cottage burned like the sun’s after image on his retinas.

“Whoa! Tom!” Harry shouted from the chair beside him. “You’re okay! We’re at St. Mungos! You’re safe! Breathe!”

Tom’s gaze snapped to Harry. Harry looked sleep-deprived and worried, the left side of his face still sporting a crease where he’d fallen asleep on his crumpled up jumper tucked to the arm of the chair.

Harry’s hands were splayed open, and Tom spotted the gleam of _his ring_ winking at him from Harry’s finger. Tom shuddered. He couldn’t breathe properly until Harry reached out, running his small hands down Tom’s back, and then his breath came in juddering gasps. He could feel the slight tug on his nightclothes as the calluses on Harry’s hands caught on every stroke. “Where’s my wand?” Tom clipped. He couldn’t look away from Harry, his face.

“Right here,” Harry offered, drawing the length of yew out of the wand holster on his own arm, beside his own. He pressed it into Tom’s hand with steady fingers. “You’re alright. The Aurors got there after you wiped the floor with the arseholes responsible, scraped them up and took them to Azkaban for you.”

Tom gripped his wand with white-knuckled fingers, and then he reached out with a rough hand and seized Harry’s hand just as tight. He could tell it hurt Harry a little, but he couldn’t bear to loosen the grip even a bit. He brought Harry’s hand to his mouth. He took deep breaths through the scent of Harry’s skin, savored the buzz of Harry’s magic against his skin. He still felt volcanic, seething. He knew Harry could tell. He ran his thumb over Harry’s ring to reassure himself, reveled in the comforting weight of his own. 

“If you ever even touch Justin Finch-Fletchley again I will kill him.” Tom said, pretty evenly, considering the circumstances.

Harry blinked at him, looking adorably worried and confused. “Wot? The new Muggle Studies professor? Why would I even...” Harry looked at Tom’s face, trailed off.

Tom nodded, ultimatum laid down, and finally fell back into the sheets. He kept Harry’s hand captive to his face and just breathed in the scent of his husband.


End file.
